Polish Jews today celebrated the 25th anniversary of the end of the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto, an event that ranks second only to the Warsaw Ghetto revolt in the annals of Jewish resistance to the Nazis. But the Government-controlled Polish press and Polish organizations virtually ignored the occasion. The local Jewish press however recalled the suicidal stand of the Bialystok Jews which began on the morning of Aug. 16, 1943 and lasted until Aug. 20 when only a handful of survivors of the town’s 60,000 Jews escaped to the forests to join other partisan groups.
The signal for the revolt against impossible odds was information that German troops were about to enter the ghetto to round up its inhabitants for transportation to death camps. When the troops entered, they were met with hails of bullets and savage hand-to-hand resistance. The proclamation calling for the revolt acknowledged that Bialystok Jews were doomed but urged them to “fight to your last breath. Use any weapon that you have in hand. Let the enemy pay with blood for blood.” The commanders of the ghetto fighters were Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tomaroff, a chalutz (pioneer) and Daniel Moskovitz, a Communist. One of the other leaders was Chaya Grossman, today an official of the Mapam Party in Israel. It was estimated that the Germans slaughtered a quarter of a million Jews in Bialystok province, among them 80,000 children. One hundred and eight Jewish communities were wiped out. These included, in addition to Bialystok, 25,000 Jews in Grodno, 8,000 in Sokolka, 7,000 in Wolkowisk, 6,000 in Bielsk, 5,000 in Swislowicz and the rest in smaller towns and villages.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
